Lawyers poised to throw the hammer down on voting irregularities in Ohio

The Cleveland area will be ground zero for teams of lawyers from both presidential campaigns looking for voting irregularities and possibly initiating legal action, according to this story from The New York Times.

“The lawyers will note how poll workers behave, where voters are directed, if intimidation appears to be occurring, whether lines are long,” the newspaper reports. “And they will report up a chain of command where decisions over court action will be made at headquarters in Chicago and Boston.”

Greater Cleveland is a focal point, The Times says, because “many people believe history teaches a simple lesson: the more votes cast here, the likelier President Obama is to win.”

Democrats “will have 600 lawyers in action here in Cuyahoga County and 2,500 across the state, their organizers say,” according to the newspaper. “They have been holding training sessions, grouping legal volunteers into workers and supervisors.”

Republicans have much smaller teams — about 70 in this county — “and will rely more on surrogates, including non-lawyer poll workers,” The Times reports. “Each side says the other cannot be trusted and, given the likelihood of a tight presidential race, the risks of litigation here — and delayed results — are high.”

“How tough would it be for them to send people to the wrong precincts and tie up poll workers to slow things down?” asks Stuart Garson, chairman of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party. “If we see someone getting in someone's face, our lawyers will be there.”

In an interview with Bloomberg, he says the diversified manufacturer may win a higher premium from investors beginning to evaluate it as a multi-industry firm, a category that includes General Electric Co. The Cooper deal will boost electrical, aerospace and hydraulics businesses to 80% of sales, while the truck and auto parts units, which link Eaton to the capital-goods category, shrink to 20%, Mr. Cutler tells the news service.

As Bloomberg notes, “Multi-industry companies normally trade at price-earnings multiples of 12 times to 16 times while Eaton as a capital-goods company has historically traded at about 9 times to 10 times per-share earnings.”

“You're starting to see it be monetized in our stock,” Mr. Cutler says.

Jeffrey Hammond, a KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst in Cleveland, wrote in a note this week that the Cooper acquisition will drive shares higher because it increases Eaton's market leadership in the electrical industry and lowers its exposure to truck and autos, which are its “traditionally cyclical business.”

Bloomberg reports that Mr. Hammond said in the note that he has a buy rating on the company “based on our view that the combined business accelerates Eaton's long-term earnings power and supports a higher valuation multiple over time.”

This and that

They're pumped: Industrial-strength pumps made by Mansfield-based Gorman-Rupp Co. and others will play a starring role in drying out basements, transportation tunnels and train stations in New York and surrounding areas in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

The Wall Street Journal says the pumps — known in the industry as “dewatering solutions” — “will need to suck up hundreds of millions of gallons of water before subway trains can resume full service, traffic tunnels can reopen and companies can repair the vital electrical equipment in their basements.”

People tend to overlook the importance of pumps, except "when they're in trouble," Jim Gorman, the 88-year-old chairman of Gorman-Rupp, tells the newspaper.

By the numbers: A few random observations from this morning's jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:

The unemployment rate for people with a four-year college degree is 3.8% — essentially full employment.

The economy has added nearly 1.56 million jobs in the first 10 months of 2012.

Jobs numbers for previous months were skewed, as Jack Welch pointed out. But they were too low. The BLS' initial estimate for August was a gain of 96,000 jobs. That later was revised to +142,000, and today it was revised to +192,000.

It's almost over: Last night's episode of “The Daily Show” led with the “swing state hell” Ohio has had to endure during election season.

The best title for a scary movie based on the $181 million in campaign ads we've been subjected to? “Clevelandfield,” host Jon Stewart suggests.

And he's not impressed by that O-H-I-O chant the candidates work into their speeches.

“You yell two letters at them, and then they yell two back. And one of them is the same letter,” he said.